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The Oxford Book of American Essays
Included in this volume are essays by Benjamin Franklin, Washington Irving, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Edgar Allen Poe, Oliver Wendall Holmes, Henry David Thoreau, Walt Whitman, and more.
524 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1914
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About the author
Brander Matthews
366 books2 followersJames Brander Matthews was an American writer and educator. He was the first full-time professor of dramatic literature at an American university and played a significant role in establishing theater as a subject worthy of formal study in the academic world. His interests ranged from William Shakespeare, Molière, and Henrik Ibsen to French boulevard comedies, folk theater, and the new realism of his own day.
Matthews was born to a wealthy family, grew up in New York City, and graduated from Columbia College in 1871, where he was a member of the Philolexian Society and the fraternity of Delta Psi, and from Columbia Law School in 1873. He had no real interest in the law, never needed to work for a living (given his family fortune), and turned to a literary career, publishing in the 1880s and 1890s short stories, novels, plays, books about drama, biographies of actors, and three books of sketches of city life. One of these, Vignettes of Manhattan (1894), was dedicated to his friend Theodore Roosevelt.
From 1892 to 1900, he was a professor of literature at Columbia and thereafter held the Chair of Dramatic Literature until his retirement in 1924. He was known as an engaging lecturer and a charismatic if demanding teacher. An English professorship in his name still exists at Columbia.
Matthews' students knew him as a man well-versed in the history of drama and as knowledgeable about continental dramatists as he was about American and British playwrights. Long before they were fashionable, he championed playwrights who were regarded as too bold for American tastes, such as Hermann Sudermann, Arthur Pinero, and preeminently Henrik Ibsen, about whom he wrote frequently and eloquently.
He lived for the theater and made clear his belief that theater was a performance art, first and foremost, and that plays as literary texts should never be viewed in the same light. Yet in the classroom he was an exacting guide to stage craftsmanship.
Matthews was a prolific, varied, and uneven writer, author of over thirty books. His own novels and plays are undistinguished and long-forgotten (the claim to fame of one of his plays is its footnote status in Theodore Dreiser's novel Sister Carrie: it is the melodrama, A Gold Mine, Carrie attends which leads her to consider a career on the stage).
Some of his surveys of American literature and drama sold very well as high-school and college texts. Yet one of his earliest books, French Dramatists of the Nineteenth Century (1881), is deemed to be an excellent scholarly study of the subject and was revised and reprinted twice over two decades, while his 1919 autobiography, These Many Years, is likewise deemed a deftly-told story of an education in the arts by a man who lived a rich and productive life. It also offers an interesting evocation of life in Manhattan c. 1860–1900. Matthews additionally published a biography of Molière in 1910 and a biography of Shakespeare in 1913.
- Wikipedia
Matthews was born to a wealthy family, grew up in New York City, and graduated from Columbia College in 1871, where he was a member of the Philolexian Society and the fraternity of Delta Psi, and from Columbia Law School in 1873. He had no real interest in the law, never needed to work for a living (given his family fortune), and turned to a literary career, publishing in the 1880s and 1890s short stories, novels, plays, books about drama, biographies of actors, and three books of sketches of city life. One of these, Vignettes of Manhattan (1894), was dedicated to his friend Theodore Roosevelt.
From 1892 to 1900, he was a professor of literature at Columbia and thereafter held the Chair of Dramatic Literature until his retirement in 1924. He was known as an engaging lecturer and a charismatic if demanding teacher. An English professorship in his name still exists at Columbia.
Matthews' students knew him as a man well-versed in the history of drama and as knowledgeable about continental dramatists as he was about American and British playwrights. Long before they were fashionable, he championed playwrights who were regarded as too bold for American tastes, such as Hermann Sudermann, Arthur Pinero, and preeminently Henrik Ibsen, about whom he wrote frequently and eloquently.
He lived for the theater and made clear his belief that theater was a performance art, first and foremost, and that plays as literary texts should never be viewed in the same light. Yet in the classroom he was an exacting guide to stage craftsmanship.
Matthews was a prolific, varied, and uneven writer, author of over thirty books. His own novels and plays are undistinguished and long-forgotten (the claim to fame of one of his plays is its footnote status in Theodore Dreiser's novel Sister Carrie: it is the melodrama, A Gold Mine, Carrie attends which leads her to consider a career on the stage).
Some of his surveys of American literature and drama sold very well as high-school and college texts. Yet one of his earliest books, French Dramatists of the Nineteenth Century (1881), is deemed to be an excellent scholarly study of the subject and was revised and reprinted twice over two decades, while his 1919 autobiography, These Many Years, is likewise deemed a deftly-told story of an education in the arts by a man who lived a rich and productive life. It also offers an interesting evocation of life in Manhattan c. 1860–1900. Matthews additionally published a biography of Molière in 1910 and a biography of Shakespeare in 1913.
- Wikipedia
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
May 10, 2016
Just an OK collection. Everything is pre-WWI. By far the best An. Dean Howells on dreams.
June 17, 2024
The Oxford Book of American Essays by Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr., Henry David Thoreau, Theodore Winthrop, Charles W. Eliot, Hamilton Wright Mabie, Washington Irving, Henry James, Charles Dudley Warner, Edward Sandford Martin, Henry Cabot Lodge, Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, William Peterfield Trent, William Dean Howells, Ralph Waldo Emerson, George William Curtis, Edgar Allan Poe, James Russell Lowell, Walt Whitman, Clarence King, Samuel McChord Crothers, Richard Henry Dana Jr., William Crary Brownell, John Burroughs, Nicholas Murray Butler, Brander Matthews, Theodore Roosevelt, Benjamin Franklin – Quite a few classic essays all in one place and free from Amazon! Happy Reading!
November 5, 2018
There are a few enjoyable Franklin essays, and the Burroughs "Idyll of the Honey Bee" is not bad at all. "Calvin," by Warner, was fantastic: a heart-felt ode to a cat full of personality. There's generally a few good things in here. Unfortunately, everything else was just... disappointing (poor prose, and not just by modern standards either), uninteresting (I don't really enjoy theater reviews, ever), or kinda repugnant (19th century politics, and I really hope I don't have to say more). I ended up skipping quite a few essays because they just couldn't hold me whatsoever.
"Calvin" really was great though.
"Calvin" really was great though.
July 30, 2020
Early American essays on areas of specialized interests, written in that arch style of the time. The one by Edgar Allan Poe on how he constructed "The Raven" is worth the price of admission.
February 22, 2023
Good book club book. Lots of options for discussion.
August 11, 2024
I have not read the full collection yet, but from the stories I have read, this is great and thought provoking.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews